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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Osborne House
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(1km/0.5m SE of East Cowes) In the early 1840s Queen *Victoria and Prince *Albert, with a young family, were looking for a property on the Isle of Wight which would be, in her words, 'a place of one's own, quiet and retired'. In 1845 they bought Osborne, pleasantly situated with a private beach, and employed Thomas *Cubitt to build for them the present house, replacing an earlier one. It was completed by 1851, with its two towers imitating medieval Italian bell towers.
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The wooden Swiss Cottage was built in the grounds in 1853–4 for the royal children, as a place for educational experiments in housekeeping and cookery, and the extraordinary Durbar Room with its Indian interior was added to the house by Cubitt's firm in 1890–3. Osborne with all its contents, surviving just as when Victoria and her family lived there, was given to the nation by Edward VII in 1902.
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